PATIENCE

I am sitting here, having one of my Pity Parties. I am notorious for throwing them. They pop-up unannounced, unwanted, and unsolicited. They have bad manners and bring negatives uninvited guests. No invitation is needed and R.S.V.P is totally out of the question, because I never RSVP and I still have the party brought directly to my house in full party paraphernalia.

I realize in my despair, if you want to call it that, I am being taught a great and valuable lesson in “Patience.” I am waiting on God to do something for me. Not anything in particular, but something. I feel as though I am in a holding pattern, and frankly I feel as though I have been holding, standing in place, no, walking on a treadmill, and I am not going nowhere.

I am being taught a lesson called, “patience.” Patience is the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset. Patience is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. It appears that it takes trouble to bring out the best in us. The only way God can get the fruit out of our life, is by pruning the branches. Trouble produces these fruits in our lives.

“Not only so, but also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces preserving; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (Romans 5:3-5).

After talking about the good things that come from being justified by faith, Paul goes on to add another benefit that may seem strange when we first hear of it. He says we now rejoice in our “sufferings”. WHAT! Oh yes. He doesn’t say we rejoice at our sufferings, because no one likes to suffer. He is saying that now our sufferings have meaning and purpose. Our suffering are leading us somewhere. Where? Paul says that suffering produces perseverance. Perseverance is the ability to continue onward in the face of hard times. When we are persevering, we do not give up. We push forward. Paul then says perseverance produces character. By facing trials and working through them, God is molding us into better people. Then character produces hope. When we look back on the process through which God has brought us and realize that we are still in this process, we have a firm basis for hope. We know that just as he has brought us through trials of our past, he will bring us through many more trials, and through the trials of our future.

When we are in the middle of our suffering, we are so busy hurting, sometimes it can be difficult to see any purpose in it. This is how I am feeling now. It is not until afterwards that we can look back and see that God had a reason for the suffering. He was pushing us to a higher level. I am WAITING, Lord! He is sculpting us to look more like Jesus. The pain from the suffering has a purpose.

So as we look at the role of afflictions in the life of a Christian, keep in mind that these are tests of faith. They maybe tribulations from loss of health, or tribulations from a broken or a strained relationship, or tribulations from disappointments, or tribulations from an accident or a natural disasters, or tribulations from a virus, COVID-19, or tribulations from verbal or physical assaults, or simply everyday inconveniences from traffic jams to plumbing problems. Anything that makes life harder and threatens our faith, in the goodness and power and wisdom of God, is a tribulation.

We will not reach perfection before we die, but as children of God, He means to bring us where we need to be before we reach our heavenly home. So God takes us through hard times to temper the steel of our faith and show us that we are real, authentic, genuine, proven, and in that way give us hope that we really will inherit the glory of God. The hope that is inspired by proven character will not disappoint us, because God gives us the experience of his love in our hearts by His Spirit. This is our personal experience of God’s love, flooding in our heart.